The Nightly Liaison
by Arsenic Allure
Summary: Similarities exist between obsession and imprisonment: both give, take, provoke and define insanity and their endings and beginnings seem ever infinite. The Dark Lord, post DH, and you.


Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling earns her credit. This is hers, scene manipulation is mine. Also, the lyrics are from 'Crush' by Garbage.

**The Nightly Liaison 1/1**

_I would die for you. I would kill for you. I will wait for you. To be close to you. To be part of you. Cause I believe in you. I believe in you. I would die for you._

_-x-x-x-_

The night of the winter solstice is the night that moonlight shines from under your wardrobe door and the gateway opens. The dead of winter grants you your liberation.

On this night, insomnia plagues you. Your meaningless life and its inadequacies swirl through your mind, fantasies and daydreams depicted in the dark above you as you stare at the low ceiling. A sigh, a bitter laugh.

Then suddenly, a light. Bright, brilliant and white.

You raise that useless corpse you call your body to peer toward your wardrobe. The light comes from behind its wooden door and you, acting like a child with their very first closet monster, shrink back. You clutch the bedcovers around you, your white nightgown embracing your frozen legs, wary with your gut clenched in irrational fear. 'What?' you whisper, the word escaping in a breath more silent than death, your eyes glued to the fearsome fantasy burning through your door.

But curiosity ensnares you with its devious promises of adventure and you slide from your bed, your hair flicking across your shoulders as you turn in a quick spin to keep the wardrobe in your sights, your eyes gleaming in the dark. You step forward in a stalk, a white cat in black midnight.

Your shaking hand consistently halts in the air until you stubbornly force it faster, to grasp the knob, turn it once and swing the door open. It hits the wall with a sharp bang, its reverberation resounding around your bedroom. You jump.

Your clothes on their hangers, unmoving, are outlined by the bright light that has you quaking in your thick, woollen socks. You move that tediously slow hand forward more and more until it should have hit the back board and you gasp when it does not. You pull it back from the gaping mouth of the wardrobe, frowning, considering the danger of the lion's den that awaits you.

Slowly, hesitating, you walk into the small space, clothes skimming your skin like hands tugging in an attempt to bring you back into their safe embrace. It hardly matters, you tell them, because you would get no sleep tonight. Not with something strange burning so bright.

You venture into a ghostly corridor, its surfaces dusty, mouldy and dark, textured by cracked stones seemingly centuries old. The enticing moon streams through open windows lining its northern wall. The grimy faces of the windows filter its blue pallor to grey and ensnare the moon with possessive gracelessness like a jealous lover's domineering arm.

Its light is unnerving. It is too dark. You turn around to face the only way back, now a dirty, tall and imposingly thick and deep set wooden door as a guard, search through the boxes at the bottom of reality and pull out your torch. You turn it on, watch dust dance in its tunnelled light, and nervously press on.

Your footfalls, barely there on stone floors against sock-clad feet, stutter through streams of moonlight and the light from your companion, your torch, stretches out before you to guide you through the unknown. You have walked the silent, strange passage for years before there is a sound other than your whirling thoughts: a shiver of a whisper, a desperate cry, a clatter or a scamper across the forgotten floor - you are entirely unsure.

The torch is pointed upward to see spider webs overtaking the vaulted ceiling and to the right: portraits lining the walls. Your hand traces the portrait faces, the fingertips caressing stern, stoic chins, roman noses and tulip lips. The severe faces stare you down and you turn to face the shadows, your curious hand falling away, the frozen paintings undisturbed. Your eyes peer into the milky reaches of the corridor. As those portraits pass and your footfalls rise higher and move faster as you begin to jog, the shock of their connection to the ground trembling through your body. You escape your fear. You push on.

It is progression, arithmetic progression. As the volume of your running grows, the portraits pass in twos as sheer wisps and blurs of faded art. You watch your feet slip in your socks and then you watch them slow to a pause. There is a mere second of unexpected sound: unexpected, hopeless timbres of weeping. You clench a hand in the fabric of your nightgown. The weeping has stopped. You sigh and lean against the wall, heaving breasts rising as you regain your breath.

A different sound, a minute, abrupt growl of someone angry. From behind. You turn…

And those breaths escape because he is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen.

Your exploration lasts both a second and a lifetime. He stands handsome, tall and imposing against his own full moon, reflected in a black, bottomless lake, a spindly tree rising from the ground to create the first shadow of a lovely, deep and dark forest. His feet are planted on the shores of the waters, on stones next to grass. His hair is long, sleek and spilling over his shoulders in thick tendrils dyed blue-black by the night's sapphire light. His nose is inquisitive, his eyebrows long, fine and masculine, skin pale as it were never kissed by the sun and jaw strong. Dark eyelashes frame eyes of emerald green, the irises overtaken by bottomless, infinite and black pupils. Age stares from eyes so physically young.

He wears black pants and a black dress shirt open at the collar to show the smooth curve of his clavicle and the beginnings of the incline of his neck. His back is straight and his shoulders broad but his body is lean; an endomorph, not thin, not muscular, but somewhere in between.

You do not breathe while you notice the tear-streaks across his high cheekbones, the quivering of artist's hands at his side, his left slowly clenching into a fist. These human imperfections on ethereal form fail to escape your gaze.

It is his yelling voice that releases your stolen breath from his striking aura in a rush of blood to the head: that voice, for all his beauty, that handsome exoskeleton that caused your heart to skip, is ugly and grotesque. He shouts strange words, unprecedented and ridiculously out of place.

'Away!' he commands and the order is powerful without effort on his part, his eyes flashing. That child-like voice of irrational immaturity cries, 'Leave, Muggle, away!'

You frown and close your eyes in momentary shock, only to open them to the same impossible scene. A portrait should not move. A portrait should not talk. The life size figure glowers until you stubble in a clumsy about-face in your shock at such magic. The torch light randomly displaced, you flee through the mysterious corridor back to the safety of your own domain.

But he follows in your head.

_-x-x-x-_

Most tentatively, you escape your room once more to trek down the passage with halting steps, indecision sparring with thoughts of the magic being real in your psyche. You have whispered to yourself, 'I have to know' a thousand times since you saw the impossibility, and each time its counter fades, becomes quiet, diminishes. Eventually, the battle is won because you have returned to that fateful spot to stare up at the disarming man who haunted your dreams with every second of sleep and your daydreams with every aching period of wakefulness, whirling thoughts and scenarios of infeasibilities mocking you in your head. You clutch your torch in a bloodless, shaking hand: its imitating light gives you away.

He is staring.

The very action of the life-like character is impossible, you tell yourself, even as you feel his eyes roam across your form, analysing every possible detail that he may use, that calculating look causing you to clasp your hands and look down.

You do not know why you are here: maybe it is because he seems to have crawled inside the nooks and crannies of your mind and made a home there, maybe because he is impossible. You feel you are going crazy, your hands white at the knuckles, your breathing hard: unthinkingly, you raise your eyes in a nervous flicker to his.

Locked.

He sits on a boulder, one foot drawn up with an arm resting on it, pulling his shirt back to show the start of a pale, delicate clavicle, a hand lazily twirling a carved stick the size of a ruler in its long fingers. The other hand curls under his chin in a pensive gesture of deep thought.

'You are back,' says he, that tone shockingly on par with the seemingly faultless one who makes the words.

You nod. You are drowning, but you nod.

'Why?'

You shrug. You are drowning, but you shrug.

He does not speak for a moment, only stares, and it is making you feel uncomfortable, unsure, and you brace yourself against the wall to keep your distance when all you want to do is touch him. None the less, a tingling from reality or dream makes you feel as if he is looking into your soul, past and present, personality, all: _You are drowning. _Then he speaks:

'I may never see you, or anyone, again,' he says, softly, his calm confidence so very enticing, 'so I will tell you my story. But first, the pleasantries: your name?'

You give it, without hesitation, and you think that you may give this god your soul if he were to ask.

'My name is Romulus,' he tells you, 'Romulus Aurelius.'

'Romulus.' His name is tasted on your tongue. Repeated like a mantra, a song, a pledge, a vow.

'And I am a wizard.'

Then his voice, suave and smooth, like spicy honey, trickles into your ears. You are grinning in your lopsided way, gurgling on that liquid spice and sugar to your death: asphyxiated by enthralling metaphor.

You willing ears accommodate his speech of magic, of impossibilities, of flying creatures, of flying brooms, spells, charms, potions, curses and jinxes without question, duels and a boarding school named Hogwarts. You find, as he talks, that his features never change: he has the most inanimate face, like porcelain, set, stoic, divine. Sometimes he will raise his eyebrows, sometimes he will look away and gaze toward the castle looming across the lake and, for a fleeting moment, it seems from his face that he is overwhelmed with longing that comes from the reminiscing of something lost.

Without knowing, he has told you that he has lost much and gained little back. Sometimes, when his eyes glaze, you think he may have never had some things which many take for granted. Like hope, or faith, or love… or he had love, but the love was unrequited.

His whispering voice talks until the sun begins to peak over the horizon and you, not noticing because you are so entranced by the lilt that rumbling tone, are startled when you feel the prickling warmth touch your arm.

You jump up immediately, bolting to your feet with worry overtaking your features, in the frown, the narrowed eyes, the slight opening of your mouth in a sharp intake of breath. Your eyes flick to his ephemeral surprise. You smile your biggest.

You tell him you must go, take up your flickering torch and halt when his words reach you. 'Get rid of that contraption,' he says, staring at the torch with disdain. 'Bring a candle.'

Without turning, you ask him, 'Why?'

'Ambience, of course,' he says, as if it is the most obvious thing in the world, and you nod and sprint back the way you came, leaving your soul behind.

_-x-x-x-_

The next night you can barely stay awake long enough to reach his portrait. He is busying himself with a thick, old book with a vermillion spine. You stare at him for as long as he reads, watching his impassive concentration bathed in the light from the waxing moon. As you slide down the wall, you do not tear your tired gaze from that face and all you can think is: _He is perfection._

You smile crookedly when his eyes rise to yours – fighting to hold onto your breath – and mutter a greeting.

'You are back,' he states. You nod tiredly, already beginning to dream of the form in front of you. You barely hear his question: 'You are exhausted but you are here, rather than your bed. Why?'

Fatigue clouds your mind and your only grin spreads wider as your eyes fall closed. 'I do not know,' you say lightly. 'Why do you cry?'

Your dreams shatter with the opening of your horrified eyes at your words. They widen further with your catch of anger spreading its toxic poison in the gestures of his thin mouth and raised jaw. Then he laughs, high and chilling and just a little bit ironic, and you are wide awake with the unanticipated sound. He does not laugh like that in your dreams. Challenge flashes through his green eyes. 'You do not know, you say. I say you do.'

He is laughing. You take this as a good sign. 'I say the same to you, Romulus Aurelius.'

Then annoyance is apparent in the stiff placing of his book on the boulder's edge and his slow rise from its support, then his eyes meet yours once more and you pale at the sight of malice: another rapid mood swing.

'That is dangerous ground,' he hisses, and it sounds like a real hiss more than an expression for the seething whisper which you should have heard. 'You would do well to stop such prying.'

_A portrait,_ you remind yourself. _He is a portrait!_

He is grinning at your frightened silence and that grin, even though it is detrimental to your wellbeing, is turning you into a quivering puddle. The absurdity of such a statement surrounds you like a bubble and you fear that the truth of it, locked in its ludicrous sense, is the heart of your strange obsession.

But you notice he comes closer, until the unchanging scene behind him is blocked by the expanse of his chest and his arms seem to brace on the walls of the barrier as he leans forward. He is so close that he could bend down, reach out and touch your lips. He could trace his fingers down your neck to skim the tops of your beasts through your nightgown and feel the panic in the beat of your rapid pulse. He whispers, 'Scared?'

You swallow, from your fear or from arousal, you are uncertain. 'A p-portrait is j-just a p-p-portrait,' you stutter frantically, swaying forward, watching his beguiling lips curl into a smirk. 'It is f-foolish to be sc-scared.'

'And yet, you are. Or…' he leans right back and you almost reach for his collar in sudden lust. 'Or are we mistaken?'

You are terrified. Your breath is coming in hard gasps, your blood pounding in your ears. You can not bear to answer with your desert mouth.

Bang!

He has swung in an agile quarter-turn and struck his fists against the barriers of the portrait, his form suspended with clenched fists braced on midair and a manic grin spread across his devilish face. You shriek, you grasp your chest and listen to his sickening laugh that is far from honey-sweet.

'Fine!' you yell, confused as to where your indigent anger has come from. 'You wish to be alone? Then so be it!'

You grab your candle in a shaking fist and break into a run down the hall, angry tears unbidden flying from your eyes, your mouth set in a grim line to stop the subsequent sobs. Already, you know you will be back to the horrible and beautiful man, and the stupidity of this realisation tears you apart. You feel like life is leading you to death.

_-x-x-x-_

Upon your return, he is gone. You stare at the empty portrait in agonised disbelief. With the sight of the dark castle and the consistently full moon, the spindly willow in the background still just as dead, your heart rate increases and that wretched organ can conjure no ample solace but for his return. The candle flickers as your hands shake uncontrollably so you place it at the base of the portrait, toward the bottom right corner. Its flickering is your worry. You tremble, you shake: semi-pseudo withdrawal symptoms.

Then Romulus' dark head appears with a great splash of the black water that cracks its glassy surface in each place the water is disturbed, then it settles and then the process repeats with each perfectly executed stroke from his strong arm. He rises from the water like a King rises from his throne. The water streams over the length of his body, trailing down his toned chest to the edge of black satin boxer shorts over powerful legs. You watch as the drops descend in slow motion, your mouth hanging open, your eyes wide and your leg muscles contracted tight to keep your stunned form upright. His pale skin is white with the glow of the night and his green eyes are crackling like the fire that is running through your pulsing blood. His grin sings the song of satisfied mirth. You feel sensual desire pool in your centre and watch him watch you.

Bare-chested, naked but for those stealthy shorts, he languidly pulls on the articles of clothing neatly folded at the lake's edge, each movement a component of a routine, as if a show. Waves of woeful, white-hot cravings attack like the merciless lava from a dormant volcano and spread from the crown of your head to the points of your curling toes. Romulus pulls on his dress shirt last and you follow the brilliant, nimble fingers with each fine movement they make to manipulate the black buttons. You want to be those buttons. You would do anything to be those buttons. He leans down and rests his head against that disastrous barrier, his voice as deliberate as his movements, husky and divine: 'Wet?'

Flashbacks from vivid short-term memory unbidden: rising from the water like a King, descending droplets over moonlit skin. You shiver, he grins.

That self-assured grin makes you stare at the designer shirt and the wet patches gathering to force the fabric to cling to his smooth skin and admit that he is right. You shiver again as sound reaches your ears, his words slow syllables of amusement and self-assurance. 'I know why you come here. Do you know why I weep?'

You nod, your eyes locked on his, on that mouth when it opens for his tongue to dart out and lick those lovely lips. 'You are…' You cough: it is so hard to speak with such thirst. 'You're _lonely_.'

His head rolls to each side as he shakes his head, and you fear you are wrong, and you fear that he will disappear into that lake and either never appear or rise to torture you again. 'Well done. Ten points to…' He stops and you delay your confusion for favour of the honey of his voice. 'Twenty years is a long time, especially for a wizard.'

'Twenty years?'

'Twenty years is two-hundred and forty months, one-hundred and forty weeks or seven thousand, three hundred days approximately.' His eyes flick behind you. 'The rise and fall of that moon is my clock. My sentence is for much longer.'

'Longer?'

'Forever, eternity,' says he, and he smiles slowly at your open mouth. 'Curious as you may be, I will only tell you this.' Here, he beckons you closer and you come like a starved slave to its master who holds stale bread. 'There was a war. I lost. Imprisonment in such a gaol is my eternal punishment, much worse than your Hell. A superior treatment, is psychological torment.'

As he wistfully glances back toward the castle, something you have deduced he can never reach, you wonder if he is lying, whether it were only he who lost. It ceases to matter as he turns back to you with his green eyes shimmering like the water behind him. You nod that you understand and your feel the empathy, the sympathy, the respect for his enduring strength well up inside your chest and you think that your heart might burst from its strength. He seems relieved, but you can not be certain with that impassive face.

With emotion thick in your tone, you say, 'It is a sad fate.'

'Ah, it is,' he says, grinning crookedly, like you did that night you first heard his sugary voice, seemingly centuries ago. 'You appeared on its anniversary, its twentieth year. Like you say, it seems a sad fate, but I have the moon and your solacing presence to light my way.'

You blush and look at your hands as they begin to tear your nightgown to shreds. The euphoria you feel at such a comment is like all of your Christmas' combined. He licks his lips again and you can not help it.

You pull up your stiff body, aching from the onset of cold, and raise your hand to touch him.

But he recoils as if you were about to slap his faultless cheek and you instantly drop your seeking hand in surprise. His hands are buried in the pockets of his pants, fisted around that elusive wand, every word of body language screaming fury.

'Away!' he roars, nothing restraining that emotional immaturity of his mood swings, nothing telling you how or where or why it goes so wrong. 'You shall not touch me, you filthy scum!'

In absolute and illogical terror, you scramble to retrieve your sputtering candle, its light failing with your frantic scampering, and you sprint back to the safety of your own world, his anger echoing through the halls to rape your assaulted ears. 'Run away! Flee! Don't come back, scum! No dirty Muggle, no superior witch or wizard will live when they force their touch upon the Dark Lord!'

And you plunge through your hanging clothes and slam the wardrobe door shut, throw yourself on your cold bed and shiver with sobs that batter your tired bones like angry wind against old windows. Whilst tears are streaming from bloodshot eyes, and you cry and cry with wild urgency, you hear your question revolving a confused carousel in your head:

_Dark Lord?_

­­_-x-x-x-_

Your footfalls are hurried. Your nightgown dances around those moving legs, whiter than white in the strangled moonlight. Its hue travels across your paling skin, that greyness washing away the tsunami of the clouded night. You are back, without a valid cause. You are back without knowing why, only that his name has been whispered from your lips since dawn and his question still spins in your memory and you know that you have never needed anything so badly as to see his face fall slack.

A waxing moon caresses his face. It is time for your revenge.

The wool-inlaid fabric of your clothes does not deter the shiver, and the sweat on your brow should not be there. Even though it is so cold, you are so hot. He is not looking. You wonder what he would do if he raised his eyes to find your shivering body and only that body, your hair free and untamed, and the nightgown thrown carelessly to the ground. Your fevered body liberated.

Thoughts of lust come unbidden to your mind, of heat, heaving breasts, his smirking mouth suckling your neck to mark you with a love bite of his own, to make you his. It is easier than you thought it would be to have your hands travel to your chest, skim over your hips and clutch your nightgown in quivering fingers, the fabric rising from your milky thigh.

'You sure know how to make a man wish for a warm body, darling.'

You take a sharp intake of breath. Hardened nipples visible through that nightgown, desire wet and trailing slowly down the inside of your thighs: treasure awakened. Hands ache in places where hands should not be unassisted. Your eyes snap open to see those beautiful, pristine, green eyes darker than a forest canopy at midnight, darker than you have ever seen them. They lust for your respondent body, his mouth open to mark you red. A stomach clench halts oxygen as Romulus' hand reaches for you, his form lost in shadowy moonlight. _My god, _you think,_ come closer._

You seem to tumble like a rollercoaster through the air toward his slow caress, the promise of the touch of he who stole you, but it is merely a sway that leaves that hand a single inch from your face, his lips only two steps from yours, a pouting flower you lick in anticipation, your mouth suddenly a desert. He stops.

He stops and you almost cry.

His voice is husky, a distant whisper, scathing, ironic. 'I am a portrait. Do you know what that means?' You shake your head, eyes on his conflicted dark orbs. 'I am dead,' he says. You nod, uncaring for the fact. He is real to you. 'Do you know who I am?' You nod. You sway. He sways back, away, and you bite your teeth on your lips and brace your hands against the barrier that separates you, that frame that holds the dead one in limbo. He looks to your captured lips and licks his own. 'Do you know _what_ I am?'

'Yes.'

'You don't.'

'A portrait.'

'More than that.'

'Dark Lord.'

He freezes, starts and retreats. Forgetting his dynamic nature, like a woman on drugs, insane, crazy, you dart to get him back and smack your hand on that horrible barrier of nothingness. '_No!_'

'Go.'

'No. Romulus!'

'You are sick,' he says, turning away. 'You have influenza. The cold and this musty corridor are ruining you. Your immune system needs to heal. Are you so stupid to be here whilst you are sick?'

'No!' You shriek the question at him, its desperate volume louder in your head. 'Why did you call yourself Dark Lord? Why, Romulus?'

Romulus' shoulders set straight and his hands dive into his front pockets and you know he is fingering his wand. He turns. Those eyes to yours, your heart bleeding on your sleeve.

'It was a title for a name I called myself,' he tells you quietly. 'I never want to hear that name again. Please don't say it.' His fingers pull the wand out and he looks at it. Those fingers, killing in a war he lost.

'You're dead?' you ask. He nods, looks up.

Locked. But this time it seems like your heart can see his, his soul open for only you to see: especial.

'And I've never been more alive.'

_-x-x-x-_

You are roused by his soft voice: 'Wake up, my love. It is almost dawn.' A slow, leisurely smile appears on your lips, despite your confusion: _my love_. A dream? Verity or a verisimilitude? Your head aches, your stiff body is slick with sweat but suddenly you are so very cold that all you can do is lie pathetically on the stone with your sodden nightgown twisted in your legs and your eyes fighting to open. He is repeating your name, his rumbling voice so very much like a comforting lullaby that you almost fall into your dreams once more. You think that his hand shaking your shoulder, warm and heavy, is a part of your dream. You open your eyes to find him close, crouched on the ground before you. You must be imaging: portraits can not do that. His knee nudges your arm. 'Cure your sickness: do not come back until you are better,' he orders.

Blinking hurts. With each blink, Romulus is farther away, a step, a leap, a lunge, until it simply must have been a lingering dream. You slowly raise yourself up and bend to retrieve the cold candle, shivering, each movement swirling the blood in your pounding head. With one last look to his adamant, but lovely, worried eyes, you shuffle down the corridor.

He watches until he can watch no more.

_-­x-x-x-_

You swallow again as you hurry through the beams of the familiar light of evening. You have not stopped thinking about him: he is a drug, addictive. A week without him. A week recovering for him.

A fresh candle is in your grasp. He is the star of your dreams and those dreams end whenever you wake: those fantasies filled with images of what you can never have. Your wants will remain unrequited by reality. You know good dreams always end.

There are slight shadows under your eyes and your throat is dry from your constant swallowing. Your skin is pale and still slick from your quick wash, your hair dripping against your white nightgown. You are not fully healed, but you _must_ go. You can not say the words, but you can feel them. They are the dull aching of your heat: Withdrawal, intoxication, infatuation, attachment, lust, lo—.

You see him standing in front of the boulder with his legs parted and his stance strong and you beam your most brilliant smile, almost crying with joy at his exquisite, long, jet black hair and those twinkling green eyes. He smirks at your approach, an eyebrow raised. 'Like a light at the end of a tunnel, my dear.'

You stop. You stare at him with your bright, lusting eyes, blatant questions filling their depths which he, predictably, shrugs off.

'I have been thinking of you, Romulus Aurelius,' you say, hoping that your voice is honey to him that your presence is euphoria, that the very thought of you consumes him.

'Oh?' he says, a real smile playing on his lips.

'And I have decided that to touch you would be worth my death.'

His smile vanishes, a frown crosses his features and those lovely eyes narrow. 'Don't ever say that again,' he says gravelly, as if the very thought hurts him. 'Death would not become you.'

'Death becomes _you_.' Your voice is becoming desperate: in your fantasies, he complied.

'You need to leave.'

You shake your head, your eyes imploring while you continue to spar words with him, fighting, telling him your wishes, telling him everything; suddenly shrieking.

It is too late before you notice his anger.

Romulus snarls and lunges forward, his hands striking the barrier with an angry slap. 'You wish to touch me? I wish to touch you: I wish I could throttle you! I wish I could kill you! I wish you and your obsession were dead!' You back away, your torch dropping from your grasp and rolling across the floor, placing his features in demonic shadows. 'I want my life and you want your death! Then let it be so!' he roars.

Then he whips out the wand and points it at you in a movement so fast it is a blur and his hair strikes his face like ninety lashes. A wind picks up inside his portrait so that the tendrils of his hair spiral to beat around his face in absolute fury that sends you into a shaking mess of fear as angry words form on his lips; you seem to shatter under the weight of this betrayal.

'_Crucio!_' he cries, and your legs begin to give way so you are in a half crouch, your arms flown in a cage to protect your face and your eyes squeezed shut, your heart torn to shreds.

But nothing happens. A shocked heart beat or two or a thousand later he shouts, '_Avada Kedavra!_'

But still nothing happens.

You open your eyes slowly to stare at him through your clumped, wet hair while he manically shoots off curses, his mouth twisted into a horrible snarl, those green eyes churning hurricanes, that hair a tornado of black whips, his pale skin turning white at the knuckles where he grips that renowned wand in such frantic desperation you almost feel pity. Almost.

'_Sectemsempra! Reducto! Diffindo! _Fuck! _Imperius!_ _Fiendfyre!_ Shit! Goddamn it, goddamn it, goddamn it!'

Romulus, his wand dropping from his hand in slow motion like treacle, swivels in a fall to his knees and puts his head in his hands to cry.

Looking at his sobbing back and listening to the sounds of his weeping almost breaks your heart. Almost.

Though it has dawned on you that he was trying to kill you, you are infatuated. In your tired eyes, he is your only reprieve from the mediocre life you live in comparison to his fairytale reality that seems to exist only in his words. Somehow, you realise that this fanatical thought means you are too far gone. But Romulus is crying, lonely and desperate and you feel you are insane. What else are you to do?

Whispering his name earns you no response. Louder: only a hopeless shrug.

Trembling, you reach out toward the portrait, haltingly, jerkily, until your fingers touch his back and the span of your hand curls around his shoulder.

You should have touched him long ago.

And you know that portraits are just that, portraits, but you never had even the slightest inkling that a spirit so dead could feel so humanly alive. The experience of the texture of that dress shirt, the ripple of muscles across his board back, the warmth of his blood pulsing against your fingers at the base of his neck, is worth the world. That beautiful clavicle taunts you from mere centimetres away.

You touch him for the first time and he hardly even flinches.

Instead he croaks, unmoving. 'Go get some sleep. You look terrible.'

You ask him if he will be okay, softly, gently, trying to comfort him.

There is awe heard in his voice, his actions suddenly similar to a child's, his words spoken softer and huskier than you have ever heard a voice in your life. Romulus completely ignores your question, repeating, 'Go get some sleep,' and right here he whispers your name and it dries your mouth of response. Then he adds, almost uncharacteristically meekly. 'Can you return tomorrow evening?'

His neck is smooth as your hand glides toward it, sliding over it in a kind of caress to move to his left shoulder, and you brace yourself on that hand as you lean toward his right ear and whisper, 'Yes.'

Then, somehow, you remove your touch from the pragmatics of his warmth and vanish down the corridor, retrieving your bright candle, blushing from head to toe.

_-x-x-x-_

'You will die soon,' Romulus tells you, without removing his sullen gaze from the ground.

Your hand drops from cleaning his window with a faded cloth you brought. You turn and brace yourself on the wall, a disbelieving breath escaping in a soft whoosh. His truth you already knew spoken to reality is too ominous for your liking.

'You touched the Dark Lord. No one lives after any affair with me. My past is plagued with the death of those who I—'

You can hear the last syllable; elation spreads through your veins. You search his eyes. 'Those who you…?'

He ignores the question but meets your gaze with eyes determined and artist's hands clenched. 'You touched the Dark Lord,' he repeats.

'And I lived.'

'Not for long.' Then he smiles. 'Are you completely cured?' You nod. 'You appear better. Lovely.'

You grin, and give him a playful twirl. You hardly slept the night before, anticipating your meeting, but you have brushed your hair and donned a dressing gown to keep you warm while you talk, even though thin fabric will generate little warmth for your recovery body. That red dressing gown, cut off at the thigh, silky smooth, is the same colour tone as the spine of the book he was reading.

Your thoughts have been in the corridor, on him and his words and his handsome face, your senses alive with the memory of his back against your hand and the thought that he may have shivered when you blew your answer in his ear. All night, all day, every second of your present; constant.

'I want to tell you about myself,' you say, and you know he knows your ulterior motive because you see the smirk in his eyes: to touch, feel warm caresses and rosebud lips pressed against yours, his teasing fingers in your hair, his love bite on you neck. He nods. You talk all night and sleep all day.

_-­x-x-x-_

Your silky gown is half open, its sash barely tied, his complimenting voice in your head: he said he liked the colour. You grin devilishly. The wardrobe door closes behind you. You have left your torch behind this night and instead you trail your hands over the dirty window as you walk the corridor, familiar as the contours of his face.

But soon you hear a sound, a quick beating then a hasty cessation. It can not be Romulus. It is behind you. The noise builds speed and volume and it sounds like the footsteps of a covert spy, of danger. Your train of thought leads you to the realisation that you will be caught coming into this unknown place, caught in a position where you are asked questions you have never bothered to find the answers for. You will be captured staring at a live portrait with the beat of his drug flowing through your veins, his eyes staring frozen at you wherever you go. You will be taken away and for that to happen, you would not dare get caught. You dare not leave Romulus with a stranger and retreat like a coward to your bedroom.

It is loud and it is coming and it sounds like the pounding of heavy boots jogging against the stone floor. You pant. You freeze. You run. Desperately, unthinkingly, you shriek a minute sound that is cut off before it starts by your teeth biting that traitorous tongue.

Then you are rushing toward the familiar window, the one you rubbed the grime from when you were listening and talking, to see his face better, to watch that white skin glow blue in the dark. Then you are going to pass it, your mind screaming _Romulus!_ and you suddenly skid to a stop and stare at his shocked face with worried eyes. He drops his book onto the ground, abandoning it for you, an action that would have your heart aflutter if it were not already furiously pounding with exertion.

'Someone's coming,' you say, and, before you can even ask, his hand has plunged through the suddenly non-existent barrier to become real flesh that you felt through fabric before. You hesitate, just once, but then the sound is much louder and you latch onto his hand, warm, smooth and very real. He tugs you hard and you fall into his chest.

With your eyes squeezed shut, you smell Romulus for the first time. You are inebriated by that smell, so indescribable and alluring that you have to fight to stay upright. He stares at your deep breathing and slowly blinking eyes with something raw and rare before masking his porcelain face and letting you go to stand unassisted on your jelly legs. 'Who was it?' he demands, shaking his head. 'This is a bad situation: you must go elsewhere: you can not stay here.'

You shake you head. Then you realise you are in the scene from his portrait and bumps form on your shoulders and your arms with the chill of the spring night air and the excitement of sharing a piece of him. You look around you, at the glassy black lake, the majestic, beaten tree, the mysterious castle in the background. Then your eyes lock onto his and he hears it too: the thudding, the pounding of the chase: the drums of war.

He takes your arm at the elbow, propels you toward the boulder and forces you to crouch on the ground behind it, then stands still as he can in front of it as if he were a portrait too.

But a wind picks up and you have to tell him his hair is moving with its song. 'He can't tell I'm… aw, fuck.' He gives you half a second before clambering behind you and pressing you against the rock with his body, breathing hot air against your ear. His hair is flicking your cheek like playful licks, his body, flush against your back, touching you with every movement he makes until the static nature of the position steals your breath and you are in desire of him more than you have ever been before. Years may have passed.

The thudding is close. The thudding stops just outside and you know the chaser has noticed the oddity of a methodically clean window.

Romulus, foolishly, cranes his neck over your head to see the one who had chased you and swears under his breath.

When Romulus makes that idiotic movement, you forget about the hunter and the danger of being apprehended. The slickness of your sweaty clothes against his cool dress shirt causes you to teeter on the precipice of sexual insanity, your mind hazy and dangerously unbalanced. That smell is making your eyes flutter again. Those thighs hugging your lower back, balanced against the steady boulder, disappear as he stands.

'He's gone,' he whispers, and you think he hesitated to withdraw from you. Standing behind you, his hands resting on the boulder, he says, 'I know of him. We do not have long. Forever is coming.'

You ask him who. There is only one male you can think about.

'A member of the enemy: my enemies.'

Suddenly, without even considering it, you leap up and latch onto his back to hug him from behind, telling him, 'I don't want to leave you.' You can taste him with each word you speak with the strange, open mouthed whisper of a kiss that you leave with each word as your lips catch on his dress shirt.

'Does the outside make you happy?' You wonder why he does not ask if you love him, if you hate him, why the man is chasing you. You shake your head as he turns around to stare at you as you stare at your sock-clad feet. When you lift your eyes to his face, green emeralds suck you in, his set jaw confounds you and the tussled hair makes you want to run your fingers through the strands to put it back to how he likes it in the ceaseless breeze. 'Good.'

You lick your lips and it is only a second before you are being assaulted with his kiss, bruising hard and whipping fast. His hands move from your shoulders to pull you closer by your hips and your hands actually do run through those tussled strands to tussle them more and fist the threads to pull him close. Your bodies are pressed in such proximity that you share each wave of heat and each blast of wind. Its gusting chill swirls your clothes around your shaky legs and snaps at his hair.

Your fingers move toward his collar and you fumble with the buttons. His mouth moves to your neck to give you that love bite you wanted from the millisecond you laid eyes on him: the pain feels like a mark: a dark mark from a dark lord. His searching hands undo the silk dressing gown and it falls to pool a passionate red at your feet. The breeze rolls that silk toward the lake's edge. Each movement is shared between you, felt by both, his mouth again on yours. The warmth of such pent-up feeling is expressed in each instinctive roll of your hips, countered by his so that the kiss is more like a duel or a dance than anything else.

Then he is the one to break away, licking his lips, his eyes deep green and his lips curved into a smirk. But it falls: 'You can't stay here. You're mortal. I'm dead and you are still a live mortal. Forever is coming.' You move to kiss him again but he takes your shoulders in a death grip and keeps you away. 'We only met a fortnight ago: you have to go live your life. I'm going to freeze, I'm—'

A drug: a love drug. He is ecstasy, he is the fuel of life. You have not slept because of his power. So you bring him as close as he will allow, bring your lips to his ear and you kiss the soft shell and the softer earlobe and nip it with your teeth in playful attachment. You tell him, 'You wished me to die. I will stay with you, to die, forever, and forsake my empty life for fulfilment in you. What is eternity but continuation of now?'

You think he is grinning when you press your wilful, tulip lips to his but he is frowning, because he has seen your eternity together end right at its beginning. But he does grin when your lips connect. He pulls your body close by strong arms wrapped around your waist, forcing all of his power and breath-taking confidence, his everything and anything, to barrel into your hungry lips. Your shared now stretches into another of the same, your eyes tight, your hands wrapped around his neck to keep from drowning. Now goes on forever…

Until it is frozen. Suspended. Finished.

All good dreams end.

_-x-x-x-_

Three figures stand in the dusty corridor, gazing at the picture that should not have been moving. The Golden Trio examine the picture capturing the evening scene, the two lovers locked in their passion for the rest of eternity.

Ron leans against the wall and jabs his thumb at the painting. 'Twenty years since the Battle and the time these corridors were sealed off, and we miss _this_ one?'

'The winter solstice' is all Hermione says. Harry stares at the figures, one black, one white, a blood red gown pooling around their feet. The look of desperation on their faces make his heartstrings twist uncomfortably in his chest. He turns his gaze to Hermione as she whispers, 'Harry… do you see it?'

'See what?' he questions, looking toward the painting again.

She refuses to tear her gaze from the picture, her eyes glazed and shining. 'In the picture… this… image. Harry, that's Voldemort, isn't it?'

'Tom Riddle,' he realises in awe. The jet black hair, the dark eyes, his form towering over the girl so he has to bend his neck to kiss her, everything he should have burned into his head like his lightning bolt scar.

'Not only that,' says Ron, looking at the picture too. 'That's the girl I was tailing: that's her. How could she get in there? There is no way to get in there unless she's—'

'She's not dead. At least, she wasn't,' Hermione amended quickly, flicking her eyes toward their frowns. She swallows, as if the words had a bad taste to them. 'She must have… loved him. Oh, Ron, Harry, I know that is hard to believe from our perspective, but what if she didn't know? What if it was completely unbiased? What if he had changed in the twenty years he has been hanging here as an ode to what he should have been, brooding? He would think about a lot in those long years of solitude.'

Harry stares at her, asking his question though he already knows the answer. 'You mean she loved him, or the idea of him, enough to sacrifice her life?' Hermione merely nods. 'I know the feeling,' Harry whispers, and the trio smile at each other. Ron wraps his arm around Hermione's shoulders and Hermione takes Harry's hand as they turn to walk away, their cloaks swishing against their legs.

The moonlight is left undisturbed to caress the scene of tragic love, misguided hope and infinity: the two everlasting lovers transcended mortality and died with their first, immortal kiss, their now made eternal.

Good dreams do not have to end.

**Fin.**

Comments are appreciated. Thank you for reading.

-AA-


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